


I Wanna Ruin Our Friendship

by PurpleStage



Category: It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Related, Dennis has some dom tendencies, Dirty Talk, First Kiss, First Time, M/M, Oral Sex
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-10
Updated: 2018-09-12
Packaged: 2019-02-12 22:44:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 15,255
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12970008
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PurpleStage/pseuds/PurpleStage
Summary: Based on a playlist, chapter titles correspond to the songs. Mac is finally out and Dennis is interested. Aligns with canon to a point, obviously, spans from "Hero or Hate Crime" onward. Thanks in advance for reading!





	1. I Want To Break Free

It wasn't just saying the words out loud, it was biting back the urge to immediately retract them. He'd said them to himself though he wasn't sure if he believed them fully then. He felt sure now, maybe it was the success the bar had been enjoying lately or that the apartment was almost done and he was about to go back to living with Dennis, just Dennis, but either way, he didn't feel God's wrath hanging over him quite so heavily anymore. Mac was gay. Maybe he wasn't ready to tell the gang yet, but he wasn't going to lie to himself anymore.

He smiled to himself, popping another peanut from the bowl on the bar into his mouth. There was a kernel of excited warmth in his stomach unfurling slowly as he wondered who he would end up telling first. His parents were out of the question for now. He wasn't ready for something so big and fragile to be met with a cigarette cough or a slow blink that somehow pushed him further away from the exact closeness he'd been craving. Someday, though, he would have to tell them. Did it matter that his father had had sex with men himself? He almost gagged at the thought, but he was realizing that that had more to do with it being his DAD than it being gay. Maybe Luther would end up understanding. It was a ridiculous thought, but stranger things could happen, he guessed.

Dennis was somehow the most and least likely candidate, and that was as hard to admit as the news itself. They were blood brothers, why shouldn't he be the first to know? They told each other everything, shared everything. They'd spent twenty years together.

And yet.

Maybe that was the crux of the fear, that something they'd spent so long building could be destroyed if Mac went about this the wrong way. He glanced over at Dennis, who was slicing limes and bickering with Dee. Would he care? He'd insinuated in the past that he didn't, hell, he'd done his fair share of flirting at Mac, but would that matter when the truth came out in the open without being reversed? Would he decide it was too weird to live with a gay man? Mac himself would've said so just six or seven months ago. A random gay man, sure, but what if their situations were reversed? Would it be too weird to live with Dennis if he were gay? A flutter, not unfamiliar but unwelcome, erupted in Mac's chest at the thought. No, he supposed, he wouldn't have objected to that at all.

The rest of the gang, well, they could take it or leave it. He knew they didn't care and if they did they could get over it. He didn't have to live with any of them, at least not for much longer. Dennis was tougher to figure out though, always had been.

As it turns out, nothing pushes you out of the closet quite like the rush of winning ten thousand dollars. He'd eagerly signed the paper and, well, he'd never been one to waste a perfectly good moment. Dennis was still nagging at the back of his head, the way he'd said "You can go back in, you got your money." Like he was already bitter about it. And that had to just be that he'd lost the argument about the ticket, but Mac couldn't shake the idea that Dennis was holding the way he'd gone back into the closet after the cruise against him. He hadn't even realized that Dennis was upset about it.

Back at Dee's apartment, he sprawled out over the couch and put on Predator, just to calm his nerves. Dennis got home halfway through, and Mac gave him a toothy grin. "Ten thousand bucks, how cool is that?"

Dennis scratched at the back of his neck. "Yeah, we uh-" he glanced up sheepishly, "We used your ticket to pay for the attorneys, it was Frank's idea."

Mac's face dropped. "Oh."

"Yeah, it's just that you were the one who asked for the mediation so it seemed fair-"

"No, yeah, sure," Mac said, nodding stiffly. "How much is left over?"

"Fourteen." He wasn't making eye contact.

"Hundred?"

"No, total. Fourteen dollars." He stood awkwardly, rocking back on his heels and watching Mac's face. "I probably should've waited until tomorrow, huh?"

Mac swallowed. "Yeah, maybe." He let his eyes drift out of focus, glazing over the frozen image on the tv screen. "I dunno though, I hadn't made any plans for the money so it's not like I'm really losing out on anything."

Dennis stepped forward and settled on the armrest of the couch, not quite in Mac's space. "So, you aren't upset that you came out over less than twenty bucks?"

Was that what he'd been worried about? That Mac would slink back into the closet because he'd lost the money? It was a fair suspicion, he supposed, but it stung a little now. "No, Dennis, I came out because I needed to. The money just kind of sped things along, I think. And I'll really fucking miss it, but I meant it when I said I was out now."

Dennis nodded slightly as he listened, and smiled, just barely. "Well, good," he said at last, "That shit was getting pretty old."

Mac chuckled. "Yeah, no kidding."


	2. Jenny

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mac and Dennis have their first monthly dinner since the coming out. It goes a little off the rails.

There wasn't any change in how Dennis treated Mac, not at first. They still bickered and had movie nights and ganged up on Dee. The change came when it came time for their monthly dinner and Dennis suggested a fucking gay bar.

"Jesus Christ dude, just because I'm out now-"

"You aren't listening," Dennis hushed him, "Look, you can back out if you want to, I just thought you might want a fun night out, that's all." God, like he didn't know exactly what he was doing, phrasing that innocently as a challenge.

"I can get that on my own," Mac grumbled, "You don't have to pander to me."

Dennis folded his arms over his chest. "Did it occur to you that I want to go too?"

It was the last thing that had ever occurred to Mac, and his reply came out as a spluttering of disjointed sentence fragments until he could re-order his entire world view. "Why the fuck would you want to come to a gay bar with me?" His mind was right on the button but he couldn't get himself to push it. "I mean, are you-"

"No." Dennis waved the idea aside with a breezy motion of his hand. "But my blood brother is, and these dinners are about both of us."

"Oh." His heart was still pounding in his throat and, he realized, his palms were sweating. "Well fine, but don't jam me up if I find someone hot there. And don't lead anyone on just because you can."

Dennis's mouth tightened into a thin line and quirked up crookedly. "Can't promise anything."

Mac huffed out a short breath. "Fine. I'll change."

The bar wasn't at all what Mac had pictured, in fact it looked a lot like a sports bar if sports bars hired solely fit, shirtless men as wait staff. The Phillies were on across the screens of four separate tv's and they had good beer. Mac stayed quiet as he sipped his, watching Dennis as he surveyed the room. "What do you think?" he asked, leaning into Mac's space.

"I think two beers isn't much of a dinner." Mac said, curtly skirting the question.

"Well they do have food, you know."

"This stuff is all carbs."

"So?"

Mac rolled his eyes. "So you won't eat any of it and I'll feel like a fat ass eating fries in front of you, and I told you we didn't have to come here so I'll feel like an idiot." He didn't sound as nonchalant as he'd hoped.

Dennis huffed out an exasperated breath. "If I promise to share the fries or the potato skins or whatever fried crap you want to get, will you please try to enjoy the night?"

"If you're gonna get all irritated about it—"

"Then let's go somewhere else, huh?" He was challenging Mac again, daring him to up the ante, and Mac still couldn't fathom why. Instead of taking the bait, he signaled over a waiter, a lean, hairless man in dark jeans, and ordered sliders.

"I'm happy to go somewhere else," he said as cordially as he could manage, "But let's not go on an empty stomach."

"Somewhere else" ended up being a full-on gay club by Mac's doing. If Dennis wanted a game of chicken, well, he could have it. This was Mac's territory. He even let himself get separated from Dennis to dance on his own, and when a muscular, blue-eyed man sidled up to him to offer him a drink, he didn't turn it down, didn't say he was there with someone already.

An hour in, though, he realized he couldn't see Dennis anymore, not even out of his peripheral. He stood up, giving a dismissive wave to the man next to him, and meandered into the gyrating clump of people at the center of the room and would have gasped aloud if he'd been able to hear it over the music.

Dennis was there, in the center of it all, with his head tilted back and the lights playing over the pale skin of his torso. He was shirtless, gleaming with a thin sheen of sweat, like—

Like a golden god.

The flutter in Mac's chest was back, and he let it grow, trying to breathe steadily as he watched Dennis. When Dennis had tried stripping it had felt like this, that same anxious excitement, the same drifting thoughts. Mac wasn't the only one paying attention, either, Dennis was attracting stares from six or seven men around him, and though he didn't seem as if he noticed, Mac knew better, knew he was basking in it. He felt agitated for some reason. It wasn't like Dennis was keeping him from dancing or drinking, there was no reason he couldn't have his own night without his friend.

This was their monthly dinner though, and Dennis had spent all of it trying to make some kind of point about how accepting he was of Mac and Mac's lifestyle and Mac being his gay friend, and this was exactly the kind of thing Mac had stayed in the closet to avoid, this cloying, pandering bullshit leaking into their friendship, making Dennis insist that Mac pick the place for dinner like they were on some kind of date—

Oh.

God, was that was this test was about? To see if Mac was attracted to him like he was one more candidate to be D.E.N.N.I.S'ed? As the thought came crashing into his head, Dennis turned, just slightly, and found Mac's face, grinning, and that smug look was too much. He stalked forward with his jaw set, ready to punch his lights out.

It surprised him as much as it did Dennis when he took his friend's face in his hands and pressed his lips to his.

Dennis pulled away, sputtering "What in the hell, man?"

"If you're gonna push me like this you gotta be prepared for when you go too far," Mac seethed. "Whatever version of your system this is, congrats, I'm attracted to you and all, but you know goddamn well you're just playing me and you don't do that to your blood brother."

Dennis' eyebrows knitted together in confusion. "You're attracted to me?"

Mac's eyes widened in disbelief. "Don't fucking do this. There's no way you didn't know after your little stripper scheme." He saw the shadow of Dennis' adam's apple bob in his throat. "We should probably go somewhere quieter if you're really gonna do this right now."

"What exactly am I doing?"

Mac leaned back in towards him, letting his voice drop to a growl. "Just put your damn shirt back on so we can get out of here."

Outside, the air was cooler and swimming with exhaust fumes and cigarette smoke, but it felt like an improvement from the cramped sweatiness of the club. Dennis came stumbling after Mac, tugging the hem of his shirt back down. "I'm not trying to use the system on you," he said straightaway. "I mean maybe I wanted to see where our boundaries are now, but I wasn't ever gonna—"

"Hold on, what do you mean our 'boundaries'?"

Dennis shoved his hands into his jeans pockets, staring pointedly at the sidewalk. "You're right," he admitted, "I knew you were attracted to me. And I honestly kind of wanted to see what it would take to get you to act on it. If you would risk ruining our friendship."

A thin, burning thread of anger wound its way around Mac's windpipe, choking his voice into a rasp. "I'm the one ruining our friendship? You force me into some fucked up gay bar date with my straight best friend and I'm the one ruining things because I took some of the bait?"

"I'm not your straight friend," Dennis said quietly.

"You said earlier—"

"I'm not gay," he shot back. "But I've known I was bi for a long time now."

Mac felt his lips moving, but no sound came out, like he was a fish gasping for oxygen. "Why the hell didn't you tell me?" he asked at last.

Dennis still hadn't looked at him. "I thought it might get your hopes up. I wasn't ready for you to be coming on to me or for it to be a thing-"

"So you just made my coming out into a thing."

Dennis let out a long breath, too close to a sigh. "You kissed me." It wasn't an accusation, just stating a fact, but it pricked at Mac, made him feel defensive, like a bird puffing up its feathers.

"Well shit, did I ruin everything?"

Dennis took a small step towards him. "Yeah, I think so. I can't gloss over that one."

Mac's heart thudded. Dennis had to be kidding. "So what, we're not friends now? Because I kissed you once?" He was trying to sound indignant but it came out as a strange, sad sound.

Dennis came yet closer and traced a finger down Mac's jawline. "I don't know what we are now," he murmured, "but I think it's time we called it more than friends."

He kissed him, softly, outside, where people could see, and his warmth seeped into Mac's chest as his heart beat out a cheer.


	3. Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They bang/the story earns its M rating/I write my first sex scene ever

When they broke apart from each other, Dennis whipped out his phone and began texting frantically. Mac shook himself, feeling dizzy. “Who are you-“

  
“Dee,” Dennis said breathlessly, “Gotta make sure she’s not in the apartment.”

“What—why?”

Dennis paused, his eyebrows crinkling together. “What do you mean, why? I thought this was kind of heading in a certain direction.”

Well if Mac had been dizzy before he was faint now. “Oh. Um. I—“

“If you want to, I mean, I just thought…” he trailed off, knowing the meaning was clear, knowing Mac had bit back more than he ever had for his sake, giving him permission to rush forward.

“Yeah no, I—I want to.” Mac breathed, beaming over at him.

Dennis fumbled slightly with the keys when they reached the door, and Mac wondered if his hands had ever shaken like that before sex with anyone else. He couldn’t dwell on it long before Dennis shut the door behind them and pinned him to it, breath hot on Mac’s neck and one of his hands gripping his hip, almost hard enough to bruise. He was sucking at the juncture of Mac’s neck and his shoulder, drawing up blood to mark him, and Mac groaned softly at the thought, reaching for the small of Dennis’ back to pull him closer. Dennis moved off his neck and stared at him for a moment, lips parted, pupils blown wide before he moved to kiss him again, darting his tongue into Mac’s waiting mouth. Without breaking apart, they stumbled backwards until Mac’s knees buckled onto the couch, Dennis straddled over his legs.

He needed a second to take that much in.

He pushed Dennis back, gently, and leaned back into the couch. Dennis’ ears were blushing bright red, and he was panting, the sky-blue of his eyes trained on Mac’s. “You okay?” he murmured.

Mac swallowed. “Yeah. Yeah, I just needed a second to make sure you were, you know,” he gestured vaguely at Dennis’ torso, “still here.”

Dennis quirked an eyebrow upwards. “Am I sometimes not?”

Mac quickly glanced downwards, feeling the redness creeping into his face. “I just meant I didn’t think this would really happen.” He watched Dennis tilt his head, just slightly, saw the glint in his eyes turn darker, more predatory, as Dennis swooped back into his space, his lips brushing the shell of Mac’s ear.  
“Did you fantasize about me, baby boy?” he whispered, and Mac shuddered. “Did you stay up at night with your cock in your hand thinking of me?” Mac bit his lip, hard, his heart racing. He knew this was part of Dennis’ thing, his need to be praised in whatever he did, but fuck. “Tell me what you did when you thought about me, Mac.”

Mac struggled to think clearly, to sort through the images floating through his brain and arrange them into words. “The first time was when we were in high school, senior year. We went swimming together and afterwards we rinsed off together, I think it was the first time I saw you naked. And that night—“ he swallowed again, trying to coat his dry throat as Dennis resumed his ministrations on his neck. “That night I imagined you, dripping wet, but in my room, and I remember wanting—“ Dennis slid a hand under his shirt, his fingertips tracing over the outlines of his torso, “I just felt so much wanting, so much pull towards you, wanting to know what your skin felt like, what your mouth tasted like, what sounds you made.” He had to stop there, Dennis’ thumb was sliding over a nipple and he smiled, thin-lipped, like a serpent, as he tugged at the hem of Mac’s shirt. Mac obliged him, lifting up his arms, and let out a breathless sound, half-sigh, half-chuckle, when Dennis did the same. They’d seen each other shirtless dozens, hundreds of times, but Mac had never let himself stare so wantonly like this.

“What did you want to do to me, Mac?” Dennis punctuated the question with a small, suggestive thrust of his hips, grinding their crotches together for the briefest of seconds, and in his dizziness, Mac answered in a harsh burst.

“I wanted to fuck your mouth.”

The snake-smile grew wider, and Dennis’ hand slithered downward, parting Mac’s legs, palming at his crotch. “Show me,” he whispered, “show me how bad you want me.”

He felt so wonderfully helpless, lightheaded and whimpering for Dennis, feeling his cock harden. Dennis moved off of him and sank to the floor, working at his pants and yanking them down, running a feather-light hand up Mac’s shaft and looking at him with a question in his face.

“Dennis—“ Mac whispered, brokenly, “Please.”

Slowly, Dennis complied, licking a thick stripe onto his palm and pulling Mac’s boxers down as deftly as he could manage and stroking him to complete hardness. He pressed his lips to the insides of Mac’s thighs, leaving marks like the one on Mac’s neck and licking further up, teasing him. When he took Mac into the heated wetness of his mouth at last, he groaned quietly, lips inching further as his tongue ran over the underside.  
Mac’s knuckles whitened as he gripped the couch cushion under him in a desperate bid to not reach for Dennis’ hair, a bid he lost when Dennis abruptly bobbed his head forward, swallowing Mac almost to the hilt, and he shoved his fist into the soft pile of curls, hissing out his breath. To his surprise, Dennis moaned loudly and clutched at his knee, gripping hard. He pulled off of Mac, fumbling with his own pants and kicking them off. He glanced up at Mac, hair mussed, lips red, and flushed like some kind of angel of arousal. “If you’re gonna fuck my mouth,” he rasped, “Get to it soon.”

Mac didn’t need telling twice, threading Dennis’ hair around his fingers and thrusting forward, slowly, into his throat. He heard Dennis gag and worried for a split second before the grip on his knee came back.

He let go of his hair when he felt his stomach tighten and moaned, “I’m close, Dennis, fuck—“ just in time for him to pull away.

He sagged, boneless, into the couch, panting. Dennis was still between his thighs and, as his senses began to return, Mac realized he was rutting against Mac’s leg, his hips stuttering. “Dude, let me take care of that,” he offered, but Dennis simply clutched at his hand, groaning loudly as he finally came, collapsing next to Mac on the couch.

“So.” he said, still breathless.

“So.” Dennis had his head tilted back, his fingers still curled around Mac’s hand. “Did that live up to your fantasy?”

Mac laughed, deeply, from his belly. “Yeah. Five star rating and all.” He reached a thumb over to brush at Dennis’ cheeks, where his mascara had streaked slightly.

“Goddamn right,” Dennis smirked.

Later, after they’d showered and Dennis had fallen asleep, Mac stared at the reach of his shoulder blades, still feeling a detached sense of non-belief that what had just happened was real. Under the comforting warmth of Dennis’ closeness, a small, icy pit of doubt sat, feeling like the words “separate entirely”, like his father’s disappointed face, like a crucifix. He tried to shove it back away, but that was useless. It never really left. His heart ached against his ribcage, fluttering with hope, but the pit sank and spread, and he fell asleep wondering if Dennis would even acknowledge what had happened in the morning.


	4. Head Over Heels

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dennis handles the morning after with about as much grace as you'd expect.

When Dennis woke up the next morning, Mac was clenched in on himself in what looked like an attempt to out-maneuver Dee’s sprawling. He stood slowly, feeling the sting in his knees from where carpet had rubbed into them last night, and plucked a cigarette out of the pack in Dee’s purse. She was still buying them despite getting cut off from Dennis’ tip money; he wondered what she was giving up to replace that. He hadn’t smoked daily in a long time, it was something he did when he felt out of control. It felt familiar and he relished knowing he could still quit whenever he wanted. He just had that much willpower. On his third drag, his phone buzzed with a text from a South Dakota number and he had to wonder if there was anything he wanted to see less right now.

Goddammit, couldn’t he deal with one sexual mistake at a time? He shoved the phone back into his jeans without reading the text. One mistake at a time. Right. He had to remember, as smoked swirled around his throat, that he was getting better at this, that he was learning how to keep himself from getting overwhelmed so quickly. Progress.

Mac wouldn’t think what had happened last night was a mistake, and that’s what would make this whole thing such a pain in the ass. The Mac-ness of it all. Mac’s big puppy eyes full of trust, Mac’s fidgeting hands tapping together nervously, Mac’s voice hovering around a question he couldn’t make himself ask. You couldn’t just throw him away like any other one-night stand. You couldn’t break him.

He choked on his next inhale when too much heat flooded his chest.

Was he getting careless? There was a time in his life where Mac kissing him would’ve meant one of them stayed at Charlie’s for the night. It certainly wouldn’t have ended with Mac’s dick in his mouth. Why had he let it go so far? He tossed the butt of the cigarette onto the sidewalk and crushed it under his heel. He already knew the answer to that.

He didn’t put off getting to the bar. There was no point, Mac would bring it up first no matter what. He even made himself ignore the swoop in his stomach when the door swung open, staring determinedly at the rag he was wiping down the counter with. “Did you take the bus?” he asked, needing to be the one to break the silence.

“Well I wasn’t gonna ride with Dee.” Mac slid onto the stool across from Dennis, his fingers already tapping an anxious rhythm on the bar top. “How’s your jaw?”

He was already grinning like he’d made a clever in-joke, and Dennis’ grip on the rag tightened.

“Not like that was the first cock I sucked.” he said bluntly.

Mac’s face fell in an instant because Christ, he was too easy. Of course he thought last night was Dennis’ first time with a man. Of course he thought he was special. “Oh,” he said quietly.

He didn’t try to approach Dennis again for the rest of they except to ask for a ride home, which he agreed to. He isn’t that heartless. That doesn’t stop the air in the car from feeling thick and unbreathable. Mac broke through it first like Dennis knew he would. “So last night,” he began, and Dennis felt his fingers curl around the steering wheel until his knuckles whitened, “Are you like-like okay with what happened?”

“Don’t worry about it.” He’s trying not to sound cold, really, but it’s such a default setting now.

“That’s not an answer,” Mac said softly, staring down at his hands. “I know you don’t like talking about this stuff but you kind of initiated, you know…the banging, so-“

“We did not bang.”

“God, whatever you want to call it then,” he said, exasperated. “It’s just that this thing where you’re not there in the morning and then we don’t talk all day is not what I signed up for.”

“Didn’t realize giving someone a blow job meant I was signing them up for something.” He doesn’t have to look over to know that Mac is opening and closing his mouth like a beached fish right now, struggling for a comeback.

“You were the one who called us more than friends!” he yelped, his voice pitching upwards sharply. “What was I supposed to think about that?”

“I meant friends don’t blow each other, Mac, Christ.” He swallowed back something that felt like bile. “I meant we could have a friends with benefits type of thing.” God help him, it was so hard to lie to Mac. So hard to keep the words in his mouth from turning to lead when faced with the sheer light that came off of him. “And I won’t apologize because you took that too seriously.” He swerved into a spot outside of Dee’s apartment building and unbuckled his seatbelt.

“I didn’t take it too seriously.” And out of nowhere Mac’s voice was small and wounded, like the moment he found out his father had been writing to him after all. “I didn’t. You kissed me. And we-we’ve known each other for more than twenty years, Dennis, I know you, and you don’t get to do this to me.” His eyes were shining thick with tears he was unsuccessfully blinking back.

Dennis’ tongue turned to ash.

“It just-it wasn’t just sex for me, okay?” Mac blurted, wiping his eyes fiercely with the back of his hand. “And I know you knew that.”

Dennis just looked at him for several long seconds, trying to breathe slowly, trying to force enough oxygen into his lungs to crowd out the roiling nausea in his stomach. “I don’t want you for the right reasons,” he finally said, carefully.

“What?”

“Mac, you know me. You’re right. You know that I-“ he swallowed, trying to maneuver the words around a dry throat. “That this shit is hard for me. I don’t know what the hell I feel about you, but I know I feel it because you’re so goddamn devoted.”

Mac’s eyes narrowed. “What do you mean?”

And fuck, how to explain it? How to tell a man you need him because he says your name like a prayer, because even when you’re on your knees you know he’s worshipping you, because you crave the satisfaction of knowing you beat his Catholic God in the fight for his love?

Is it really love if you only feel it because the other person is the only one who’ll buy your own bullshit?

“I had to act out the second I knew you were attracted to me,” he forced out at last, “Because I wanted to have you in a way no one else could. Because if you’re gay and attracted to me I can’t let anyone else be with you.” His hands were trembling and he wanted nothing more than to go bolting away, far away, maybe as far as South Dakota because he sure as hell couldn’t fix things here. “Because no matter how much I know it isn’t true, I-I need to believe that I’m still a god to someone, and you look at me like a god.” He stared into Mac’s face, trying desperately to read it, but the silence stretched too long and he swung the car door open, striding towards the building entrance while Mac jogged after him and tugged at his arm.

“Dennis, just wait-“ On reflex, Dennis yanked his arm away, but he forced himself to stop walking away. “I don’t know what we are, okay? And it’s alright that you don’t either, I don’t care. I just need to know that what happened last night wasn’t just you, you know-“

“Being Dennis,” he muttered darkly.

Mac wrapped a hand over his shoulder. “You can be kind of an asshole to the people you sleep with. I know that. I went ahead anyway because it meant a lot to me, getting to connect with you like that, but you can’t screw me over.”

Dennis clenched his fist, willing himself not to shove Mac’s hand away. “I don’t want to. Christ, Mac, I know you and I are different, but I’m-“ Selfish? Vain? The product of fucking Frank Reynolds?

Broken?

“I don’t know how to be with someone I care about,” he whispered.

Mac’s hand shifted between his shoulder blades and pulled him into his chest, holding him there, steady, rubbing small circles onto his back. “We made it for the last twenty years, dude,” the voice at his ear rumbled, “One blowjob isn’t gonna change that now.”


	5. You're Crashing, But You're No Wave

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bridge chapter to get us to the actual plot. Dennis is panicking.

The first thing Dennis heard the next morning was Dee, already operating at full volume. "Did you take my cigarettes?" she barked when he blinked his eyes open. Her hands were pawing frantically through her purse.

"I took one," he muttered, still shaking himself into consciousness.

"Well they're all gone, dick, so where'd you put the rest?"

She was grating at his skull. "I just told you I only took the one. Why don't you just ask Charlie for his?" He rubbed at his temples and glanced to the other side of the bed. Empty.

"I was buying his too, okay?"

"You mean I was buying his," he shot back, feeling the edge of irritation creep into his voice. "Where's Mac?"

She was going through dresser drawers now. "Bathroom. Probably got up early so you didn't ditch him again."

"I wasn't gonna ditch him-you know what, it's not even your business!" Dee stopped moving. She was just scanning him now, looking at him like suddenly she knew goddamn everything, like she was so smart. "How'd you and Charlie get started smoking anyway?" He said, grasping for an out, "Some kind of post-intercourse thing?" Her jaw dropped and thrill of hitting gold ran through him. "Oh goddamn, Dee, that's disgusting. You know he doesn't shower right?"

"Yes he does," she said before she could stop herself, and bit her lip as if she could trap the words that way.

"Right," he said smugly.

"Yeah," she muttered, "You're right. I'm disgusting. I'll just leave." She slung her purse over her shoulder. "One quick thing before I do though." She jabbed a finger into his chest and leaned in, lowering her voice to a rasp that reminded him too sharply of how closely they were related sometimes. "Watch what you say around me if you're gonna keep blowing Mac.”

He didn’t think of a reply before she slammed the door shut behind her. His heart was thudding against his throat too hard and the walls of her damned apartment were closing in.

When Mac’s hand rested on his shoulder he practically leapt out of his skin and didn’t realize he’d said something until he repeated it. “You gonna get ready soon?” Dennis nodded curtly. “Great. What was Dee yelling about? Sounded bad from the bathroom.” Mac’s hair was still damp, and the fresh smell of his deodorant was on him. 

“She lost her smokes and had a conniption,” he said absentmindedly. He couldn’t bring himself all the way back down to earth, Dee’s words were still clanging around his skull. Dee couldn’t keep a secret, she’d never been good at that, Charlie would know by their second cigarette and Charlie would blab to Frank just as quick. Mac hadn’t tried to initiate anything since their monthly dinner, but if the rest of the gang knew about that, well, what excuse did he have anymore to hide? 

“Let’s stay home today,” he murmured, looping an arm around the small of Mac’s back to pull him close. “I don’t want to deal with a whole day of her going through nicotine withdrawal.” Mac stiffened under his hand like he didn’t know how to react. Maybe he didn’t.

“It’s Tuesday, dude, little early to be taking a day off.” He didn't move away though, and Dennis seized the opportunity to bury his face in Mac’s chest. The cologne on his shirt was heady and it hit in the back of his throat.

“Please?” 

Mac let out a slow exhale and brought a hand up to Dennis’ hair, stroking at it lightly. His heart was fluttering in Dennis’ ear. “Yeah, okay,” he agreed, and Dennis hoped his ‘thank you’ would bleed into the kiss he pressed onto Mac’s mouth. When he pulled away, Mac’s dopey smile was splatted on his face, crinkling the corners of his eyes. “We’re still doing that, huh?”

Dennis smiled like he always did when Mac made him, when he couldn’t help himself because the trust in Mac’s eyes heated joy in his chest until it bubbled up, warm. “We have the place to ourselves, don’t we?” Dee could wait, he decided, pushing recklessly back into Mac’s mouth, Mac’s hands and his smell. Their chests rose and fell in sync with each other as Mac’s fingers tightened around his hair, tugging without yanking. He remembered from the other night, Dennis thought with a thrum of pleasure and rewarded him with a soft gasp. 

He couldn’t remember a time before he wanted Mac. Couldn’t bother to remember a time before he had him either, there was no point. Dee knew, so what? She didn’t have the power to stop either of them, fuck her for trying, for even implying she would. Mac had been his to claim and devour for twenty years, she’d find hell to pay if she tried to dispute that.

His phone shattered the quiet, blasting out strains of Thin Lizzy, and Mac pulled off of him. “Probably the bar,” he pointed out, and Dennis groaned as he crossed the room to answer it.

The voice on the other end was small, female, unmistakably accented with South Dakota. Stupid, stupid idiot, he hadn’t checked the number first.  
“Is this a bad time?”

“It’s not great,” he hissed, glancing sideways at Mac.

“Oh-um, okay, well, I’ll be quick about it,” she stammered, “I’m coming to visit you, and I know it may not be a good time, but I don't think there’s gonna be one, and you didn’t answer my texts, so-“

No. No, no, no. “I’ll call you back.” He hung up and made himself put the phone down instead of flinging it across the room like it had scalded him.

“Who was that?” Mac asked.

“Charlie. He was going on about us not being there, like the bar actually ever does any business on a Tuesday.” His hands were shaking, god dammit. “Same shit, different day, you know?” He wasn’t being convincing, he could feel that much, but Mac, wonder that he was, Mac just nodded with slight grin. 

He let himself dissolve into the thrill of his hand in Mac’s hair, of Mac looking up at him from his kneeling position with eyes full of trust. Dee didn’t matter. Mandy didn't either, not when Mac’s lips were wrapped around him.

He sank to the ground next to Mac when he came, swallowing Mac’s whimpers as he did the same. They stumbled onto the shared bed, still panting and clutching at each other. So good, he whispered into Mac’s hair, so good for me, baby boy. 

And Mac didn’t ask questions when he nuzzled into the stubble on his jaw. Maybe that was all he needed, someone to smell nice and not ask questions. It had to be Mac though, they were too wrapped up in each other for it to be anyone else.

He began to understand, with a vague sensation of horror, that Mac was just short of becoming an addiction, maybe already was one.

The call still needed returning, however much he was dreading it, and after he and Mac were both dressed again he called Mandy back from the parking lot outside Dee’s building. She was almost as persistent as he was, always working the conversation back around to her incessant need for him to meet the little bastard. He said yes, fine, to shut her up, regretted it immediately, and swallowed acid.


	6. Hold Me Now

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I can't tell you how much I fretted over this chapter but it's done now! Fights happen. As does reconciliation.

Mac, for the record, wasn’t stupid. Dee and Dennis could shit on him if they wanted, but he’d graduated high school which was more than his dad had ever done, and street smarts counted for a lot in Philly. Was he emotionally intelligent? Maybe not, but he knew that, and he could read Dennis well enough to know something was up with him lately. It was simmering between his ears now like it had been since Dennis had gotten that phone call weeks ago because yeah, it hurt that he wouldn’t tell Mac what was going on, but Mac also wasn’t looking to get his face scratched again. If it really got bad, the truth would come out when Dennis exploded. He just had to hope Dennis didn’t take him out in the process.

The phone call hadn’t been from Charlie, that much he was certain of since Charlie hadn’t had any memory of it when he’d asked. So Dennis was lying to him. What else was new. 

It felt new though, a small white-hot pricking that needled at his insecurities and branded the same words always onto the backs of his eyelids in red neon-“SEPARATE ENTIRELY”. Neither of them were up to the task of hashing out what they were now, they were both too chickenshit, too bruised by their fathers. Dennis wasn’t sleeping with anyone else, Mac wasn’t visiting the Rainbow. They still argued and had movie nights and they still lived with goddamned Dee, and maybe that was why nothing could get accomplished between them. It was like banging Dennis’ mom again, and fuck, he should have seen that coming.

Like Dennis didn’t know he had Mac in his own little magnetic field, yanking him away from God little by little.

He let his grip on the handles of the weights machine he was using go slack, tensing slightly at the clanging of the metal. He was covered in a thin sheen of sweat but his arms weren’t sore yet so it couldn’t be time to leave the gym. Dennis had commented on his arms and chest once after he came home from a workout, had groaned when he licked away the salt on his skin and called him gorgeous until he unraveled completely like a skein of yarn, and he had loved it so terribly much but it nauseated him just slightly now that he knew, in those moments, it would’ve taken less than a few words from Dennis to get him to renounce the faith he’d clung to for forty years. Even that wasn’t the worst part, he thought, scouting for mat space to do pushups on. No, that could always be confessed away and forgiven whenever he wanted, always a clean slate with Jesus. What really got his brain buzzing in a panicky way was how right it felt at the time, not just being with a man, but being with Dennis.

He was gay. That he could make peace with, he had made peace with it, but whatever was happening here wasn’t a clear-cut gay situation. Dennis wasn’t his boyfriend but he wasn’t a fling and they weren’t in love but they couldn’t live without each other and this was working but what the hell were they going to do if it didn’t? Mac’s legs began to tremble with the effort of keeping his body elevated and straight, and he sank onto the tacky plastic of the mat, panting. If he was honest, he’d really been hoping to see Carmen today. They hadn’t spoken much since Dee’s baby situation, but she still knew him better than most people. She’d know how to get out of this muddle.

If he could just get one solitary sign that this wasn’t a game to Dennis he could rest easy, but he wasn't good with signs because he wasn’t good with subtlety. Lightening wasn’t going to flash over the gym and his Fight Milk wasn’t going to turn to blood, couldn’t get the timing right and so on. Maybe getting scratched was worth it, he thought decisively, and headed for the bus home.

Dennis was cooking when he got back; that gave Mac hope. It meant he wasn’t upset enough to skip too many meals. “Hey buddy,” he chirped from the stove where he was stirring noodles, “It’s lemon pasta with shrimp, I know you’re bulking.”

Shrimp were on the list of forbidden things in the Bible if Mac remembered correctly (and of course he did). They smelled amazing frying in the butter and garlic though, and he was bulking, so he just muttered a “Thanks.” He wanted to wrap his arms around Dennis’ waist and press his lips to his neck, one of those gestures he’d seen in movies, but it wasn’t like that. They could live together and support each other and give each other all the orgasms they wanted, but that kind of casual intimacy still felt bitingly off-limits. He took a shower instead, a quick cold one.

Later, when Dennis looked sated and peaceful with two glasses of wine in his stomach, Mac swallowed past the tight lump in his throat and asked, as casually as he could manage, “What’s been on your mind, man?”

Dennis didn't move from his leaned-back position except to tilt his head just slightly towards Mac. “What do you mean?”

Mac shrugged. “I just mean you’ve been tense lately what with the taking days off and all.”

Dennis still hadn’t moved, but Mac had clearly struck at something from the tightening in his jaw. “You didn’t seem to mind at the time.”

“I still don’t,” he said quickly, “I’m just worried about you, it seemed like something was on your mind.” He bit his lip and forced himself to make eye contact with Dennis.

“I’ll tell you what, Mac,” he said in a voice that was dangerously calm, “You know what’s been bothering me? Dee’s been bothering me. Dee’s been saying the craziest shit lately.” He’d unfolded his hands from behind his head to lean forward on his elbows.

“Well yeah, I mean, it’s Dee, you know?” He chuckled, but it came out as a harsh, forced sound. “When is she literally ever not the worst?”

Dennis flashed his teeth in an approximation of a grin. “Sure. Right. Such a bitch.” He threw back the last dregs clinging to his wine glass. “Kinda makes me wonder why you went and blabbed to her about us.”

There was that pit in Mac’s stomach again, icy and leaden and expanding. “What are you talking about?” he croaked.

“I’m talking about two weeks ago when I found out she was banging Charlie and she tried to blackmail me about blowing you.” He hadn’t raised his voice yet, but his fingers were curled and cramped in on each other, whitening at the knuckles. “Christ, you never could keep a secret, but Dee? Really?” Mac’s mouth was utterly dry. He hadn’t told Dee, of course he hadn’t, but it was possible, just possible that he’d let something slip to Charlie. Fucking hell though, since when was Charlie smart enough to put together pieces like that? “Well?”

“Den, I swear to god, I didn’t say anything to her, okay?” It was an old Rat tactic, telling just enough of the truth to make you look good, or at least get out of a jam.  
“And since when do you give a shit about if people know who you sleep with?” That was an even older trick, one of Luther’s. He didn’t even want an answer, not when the answer had to be ‘since you’.

“We are not sleeping together,” Dennis hissed, and that was so much worse, if such a thing were possible.

So Mac fell on the oldest trick in the book, muttered “Fuck you,” and stomped towards the bedroom, slamming the door behind him not quite fast enough to avoid hearing Dennis retort “You wish you had” at his retreating back.

He took several deep breaths through flared nostrils from the other side of the door to no avail. His heart wouldn’t stop pounding and the heat on his skin wouldn’t dissipate, not until he knew the truth about that phone call, or at least asked. He flung the door back open and stalked to Dennis, who was staring with empty eyes at the surface of the kitchen table. His wine glass was full again. “I didn’t say anything to Dee, I swear to god,” Mac said as evenly as he could force himself to. “I told Charlie I got laid, yeah, and if he’s banging Dee she probably worked it out for herself after he mentioned it.” He let his fingers uncurl out of fists, slowly. “That’s as clean as I can come.”

Dennis nodded curtly and took another swallow of wine. “What do you want to ask me, Mac?” he asked at last.

Mac glanced at Dennis’ fingers wrapped elegantly around the stem of the glass, and imagined for an instant how they would look around his windpipe. If he’d even fight back. “I asked Charlie about that phone call you got on the day we stayed home and he had no idea what I was talking about. And Den, I don’t-I don’t care if you have your secrets, that’s fine, but you can’t lie to me. Not anymore.” He knelt down to Dennis’ eye level. “I won’t ask who it was. If you want to keep that your business, fine. But I want the gang to know about us.”

“They already-“

“I know. But I want them to hear it from us.”

Dennis locked eyes with him, finally, and Mac’s anger sloughed off at last like snow off a roof in spring at the openness he found there. He could count on one hand the number of times he’d seen Dennis look completely vulnerable like this, and it drove straight through to his core every time with a sharp pang. “Why?” he heard Dennis whisper. He just sighed.

“Because sneaking around the bar and always looking around to make sure Dee isn’t home when we wanna make out is fucking exhausting.” Dennis kissed him, gently, cradling his face as if he thought he might break. The urgency Mac was used to in their physicality was gone, replaced by an overwhelming calm, a sense that the space he occupied between Dennis’ teeth and legs was where he fit. Dennis pulled back just before he could move to deepen the kiss and let their foreheads rest together.

“Mac, you should know, about that phone call-“

“I meant what I said,” Mac cut him off firmly. “If it comes back up again, we’ll talk, okay?” He felt Dennis’ smile of relief against his lips before he saw it.

They broke the news for real by accident on Valentine’s Day when Dennis dropped the RPG with a heavy clatter and kissed the breath out of Mac then and there. The others, far from stunned—how could they be?—gave them a slow clap, poured out shots, and that was that.

Later that night, Mac half-dreamt he heard a phone buzz and Dennis’ angry, frantic whisper from the hallway and panic swelled in his throat.

The thought washed itself away when Dennis came back to bed to bury his head in Mac’s neck and whisper “God, I love you.”

I love you too, his cheering heart thrummed back.


	7. Mr. Brightside

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> lol sorry

Dennis’ lip was still swollen when he stepped onto the plane. It had stopped bleeding, finally, but the bruise on his jaw was only just beginning to bloom and he hadn’t grabbed his concealer on his way out. He didn’t have headphones either, he realized as the middle seat in his aisle gained an occupant, and wasn’t that just fucking perfect. He’d gotten off easy though, he supposed.

Twenty miles away, Mac had finally found sleep after his seventh shot of tequila. There was a thumper of a headache brewing behind his eye sockets, but he had a few hours yet before it hit in earnest. His fingers were curled around the linen fabric of sheets he’d bought for a bed meant to be shared with Dennis. Their apartment was finally put back together again, primed for them to settle back into life together. No more interruptions.

What had happened was Mandy-from-South-Dakota was the biggest interruption possible in every way from her sudden appearance to the baby boy with Dennis’ nose resting on her hip.

What happened was Dennis had burst into the bar talking a mile a minute about how they had to call him Brian because of some girl who was staying “for good”, and even with a secret son now in the picture, Mac hadn’t worried. They’d pulled off bigger schemes than this before and it was nice to have some conflict coming from outside the gang for once. They didn’t even need to lie for this one, not much. Dennis was still only seeing and sleeping with Mac (and yes, it was true that they hadn’t had actual sex yet, but Mac felt confident that they would cross that bridge). The whole thing felt so nice if Mac was honest, what with holding Dennis’ hand in public and the slightest flicker of jealousy in Mandy’s big doe eyes. No wonder she’d fallen for Dennis’ pilot story. It felt like he and Dennis were on the same page now, acting all couple-y like this.

Raising a son together, well, that would just complete the fantasy. Of course he agreed to it. Icarus didn't realize he was too close to the sun until he started plummeting away from it.

Dennis’ ears weren’t popping and the pressure on his skull was moving just past “intense”. He didn’t want to risk asking the woman next to him for gum, too likely that she was a midwestern type just aching for a chance to strike up a conversation he didn’t want. He tried forcing himself to yawn instead while he flipped through Sky Mall without absorbing anything printed on the glossy pages. 

His jaw throbbed.

That night, Dennis hadn’t refused to sleep next to Mac, but his back had laid staunchly facing Mac for hours, a far cry from how Mac had wanted to spend their first night in an apartment they had to themselves. They hadn’t fought, not exactly, but Dennis had asked, “What in the hell were you thinking?” And Mac hadn’t been able to form an answer for him. At some point, he guessed, the situation had stopped being a scheme to him and started looking like hope, the way his father’s smile or his mother’s arms outstretched for a hug looked. To Dennis, this was still something that needed to be handled, not embraced. Gotten rid of. 

Mac woke up after Dennis touched down, 1500 or so miles away. His head had begun to pound and there was an odd, dense soreness in his wrists. Water, he thought, I need water. His limbs were too heavy to move, though, like his blood had been replaced with sand, leaving his bones to creak together at every movement. He rolled sluggishly to the bathroom, gulped down water and Excedrin, moved Dennis’ shaving stuff over to get to his toothbrush-

Oh.

His fingers went numb around the toothbrush’s handle and suddenly the smell of Dennis’ shampoo and deodorant hung like gas fumes, clinging to the back of Mac’s throat and settling in his lungs. He let the toothbrush clatter into the sink and only just stopped himself from slamming the door shut behind him on his way back to bed.

South Dakota was fucking cold. Cold and dry, which would really throw a wrench into Dennis’ skin care if he wasn’t careful. Mandy knew he was coming, but he’d asked her not to pick him up. He needed a breather between the plane and starting a completely new life, not to mention some actual toiletries.

What had happened was he’d relived every Christmas, every birthday, every school event that Frank hadn’t been a father for when he’d held Brian Jr. He’d pictured a copy of himself, angry and insecure and alcoholic, growing up lonely in South Dakota, and he’d felt nausea bubble up in his throat. He and Dee, they’d always shared that sensitive stomach. All he’d done was break his commitment to Mac to make one to his son. It should’ve been a clean transfer. But Mac had run out of the bar after him, saying he didn’t understand why Dennis was leaving, saying “please”, “Dennis”, and “stay” until he’d spun on his heels and pinned Mac to the side of an alley by his wrists, breathing like a winded bull.

“You have to let me go, Mac,” he’d hissed.

Mac shoved his grip away and barked, “The hell I do.” Even in the dim light of a street lamp, Dennis could see the wetness forming over his eyes. “I put up with your overdramatic shit for a quarter of a century, you don’t get to just walk out on me for some kid you met two days ago.”

“He’s not just some kid-“

“Look, you made a mistake because you were thinking with your dick, and that sucks, but-“

“Shut the fuck up.” His voice sounded ragged, overly harsh. “I have to be there, Mac, and this isn’t easy for me, and I’m sorry, but I can’t fuck up on this. It’s too big, it’ll eat me alive if I let it, do you understand?” Tears he hadn’t felt form were streaming down his cheeks. “I’m sorry, but you have to understand.”

And though he was trembling, Mac looked made of stone when he said “No, I don’t,” and stepped away from Dennis, who couldn’t remember Mac, his Mac, ever sounding so cold. “I offered to raise him with you, I was goddamn jumping at the opportunity, and you shot me down. I gave you an out.” He blinked rapidly, forcing his own tears back. “And it’s fine, Dennis, if you don’t love me, I can move past that, but Jesus Christ-“ he choked for an instant, then swallowed past it, “Tell me to my face and save me some time.”

What happened was Dennis knew a lost cause when he saw it, but that didn’t stop him like it should have. What happened was Dennis tried desperately to kiss Mac and prove him wrong and Mac’s fist had collided with his jaw in a white explosion of pain. Mac had walked away after that. Dennis had let him.  
In the crappy fluorescent light of a Walgreens it was one hell of a trick to find a decent concealer, so Dennis shoved his best guess in with his toothpaste and shaving cream. The cashier raised an eyebrow but he couldn’t be sure if it was meant for the makeup or his busted face. It didn’t matter. Dennis Reynolds was here in the middle of nowhere and they could get used to it.

Getting back to sleep at this point was proving more futile with every passing minute; Mac was too shaken up, too numb, not to mention hungover. Going in to Paddy’s felt like a trap filled with fourteen years of memory, but somehow, staying in the apartment he’d designed for them seemed worse. He forced himself to shower and squeezed Dennis’ expensive shampoo down the drain, feeling lighter in the same way he had when the Range Rover had gone up smoking. Fuck him and fuck his amphibious exploring vehicle.

The bar was a mistake, he felt that the second he walked in and found the rest of the gang already huddled together around the stools. They all had pity in their faces, even goddamn Frank, and he wanted none of it.

“Hey, buddy,” Charlie called, tipping a beer bottle at him in greeting, never mind that it wasn’t even noon. “You want one?”

With his headache subsiding, he had to admit it was tempting. Drinking was good, drinking was something he understood. Maybe they didn’t have to talk about yesterday. For the moment he clapped Charlie on the back and swished beer through his teeth and pushed how quiet Dee was being to the back of his head.

1500 or so miles away, Dennis slammed the door of a cab shut in front of a cookie-cutter ranch home and gritted his teeth against the cold gusts of wind as he approached the front door.


	8. Maps

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pack up, don't stray

Dennis is more focused than he ever has been in his life; every edge of every object is a razor to his eye and the very air is sparking with nervous energy, slithering quicksilver in his throat to his chest. Mandy is nowhere nearby and neither is Brian, just him and his crystallizing thoughts. He’s been in South Dakota for three months now and this is the first time he’s done this so maybe he can still be proud of himself. It doesn’t matter if he or God or anyone else is proud of him though, this is survival. No room for pride anymore, just the drive to keep clinging to this feeling of ice and electricity.

He and Mandy, they don’t speak except to discuss Brian (without a real Brain Sr. present, they dropped the Jr.), or maybe to say goodnight. They were both job hunting and dodging the issue of how much they wished this had happened with just about anyone else on earth. And Mandy, sweet, stupid thing, she didn’t drink, not since she got pregnant. What an honor, to be the exact mistake that forces someone to kick such a pervasive habit altogether. 

It’s not quite being married to Maureen and it’s not quite suffocating in the suburbs, but it’s not far off from either one and Dennis has never been great at admitting when he’s made a mistake.

One month in he stopped expecting texts from Mac—none had come, which was fair. In fact the only person who still tried to talk to him anymore was Dee, and god help him if he was ever lonely enough to actually reply. Eventually she gave up too. 

There was a man on the edge of his social life, skirting the periphery, named Brady. They’d met at a bar, an Irish one, which he guessed would be some kind of sign if he ever bothered to go anywhere else, but as it was, that was just bound to happen. The bar visits themselves were transgressions in a way; they marred his own image of himself as the ultimate father, one that didn’t need a night off from the family because his family was enough for him. Fulfilling. Maybe fulfillment was a myth. Either way, that was where Brady came in. Brady, with a full beard on his face and callouses on his large hands, but more importantly with a very specific dullness in his eyes and paleness on his lips. Dennis hadn’t asked him yet what it would take to get at his stash—he wasn’t that far gone—but he knew he had one, and that was certainly a point of interest.

Mac was bonding with Dee, of all people, though nowadays that made perfect sense. Without her brother around pointing out her flaws it was easier to like her, and she had the best sense for what Mac was going through. Charlie tried at least, but he’d never been a fan of Dennis. In his eyes, the whole fiasco was just a confirmation of what he already knew. Mac wasn’t speaking to Frank unless he absolutely had to since their screaming match. Frank was the reason Dennis was gone, the reason he’d felt that insane compulsion to retroactively fix his own childhood, Frank’s neglect, Frank’s abuse, Frank’s fuckups. Mac had told him so in exactly as many words and gotten a gun pulled on him for his troubles, though at the time getting shot by Frank almost seemed preferable to having to work in the same building as him. Neither man had apologized; neither had any intention to do so, and Charlie was firmly on Frank’s side, so Mac was left with Dee. It was getting better, though.

She’d helped him pack everything with traces of Dennis on it into the linen closet where he wouldn’t have to see it, had helped him get his own gym membership. She’d even gotten him back in touch with Carmen, more of a help to him than she could ever know. In return, he covered for her. Dee was smarter than they gave her credit for and all, but she wasn’t handling doing her brother’s job as well as her own with much grace. Mac didn’t exactly have the temperament to wait tables, but he could step in. That was all she needed, most nights.

She’d have to figure something else out for awhile now, a thought that pinged a wave of guilt through Mac’s thoughts. He wouldn’t be back in Philly for days, maybe even weeks, and she would be none too thrilled that he’d taken her car.

He’d left that morning with a few changes of clothes and all the cash in the bar’s register thanks to what he’d found the night before, digging around for his copy of Thundergun. It wasn’t near the television or in his room, wasn’t even crammed between the couch cushions, and when he ran out of obvious places he forced himself to think about the strange ones. It was possible, he decided, that Dee had assumed it was Dennis’ copy and shoved it in the closet with his clothes.  
The door wobbled open with a metallic shuddering and released a warm cloud of cologne, potent from the months of fuming in the cramped space and making Mac dizzy when it crashed over him in a heady wave. He grit his teeth, shaking his head like a dog to reorient himself, and started shuffling through the shelves.  
After twenty minutes of searching, he admitted defeat. The movie wasn’t there, he must have lent it to Charlie. The clink of something small and plastic falling into the metal of a shelf made him pause in the middle of returning a pair of jeans to their dusty spot, and the source of the sound rolled into the toe of his shoe.

Orange plastic, covered with a paper label that read “REYNOLDS, DENNIS. Clozapine, 30 Days, 40 mg.”

That fucking idiot.

Like it wasn’t bad enough he’d left his smell and his shave kit and button-up shirts, he’d left his anti-psychotics too.

So Mac broke one of his own rules, the newest one, and called Dennis. It rang twelve times before it went to voicemail, and Mac could picture Dennis clutching the phone, staring at the screen while “The Boys Are Back In Town” blared. Well that was fair, he guessed, even though he hadn’t actually done anything wrong, but he wasn’t leaving a message. Instead he tapped out “Found ur meds. Do u have a new prescription?” and sent it off.

He fell asleep on the couch waiting for a reply that hadn’t come, then immediately taken to the road upon waking.

Fucking idiot, stupid prick, asshole jabroni, whatever. Mandy didn’t know the first thing about dealing with a Dennis who’d gone off his meds. 

Halfway through month two, Dennis had hit his breaking point. Aside from not having meds in the first place, the withdrawal was brutal. His heart kept racing, he hadn’t slept properly in days, and he was shaking with the dehydration that resulted from vomiting just about everything he tried to swallow. Mandy assumed it was a flu; he let her. The physical shit was nothing next to the thoughts he was having again of things buried but not deeply enough. Mandy was reminding him too much of that goddamn librarian—the way all women did eventually—and every sudden noise made his skin tighten over his bones. Every gray hair, every shadow of a wrinkle was glaringly present in mirrors, and Brian, the one person that should have grounded him again and planted him firmly into his role as a family man, Brian looked more and more like a 25-pound bundle of screaming failures.

There was no yelling when he snapped. He didn’t break anything, hit anyone, or even slam the door behind him. When he called Brady from a cab, his voice was even, though strained, and when Brady kissed him, touched him, pushed him into his mattress, he’d blithely submitted.   
It wasn’t until the acrid scent of baking soda melting into cocaine hit his lungs that he really felt any measure of need, and his first inhale from Brady’s glass pipe might as well have been God breathing life into the nostrils of Adam. No pride, no shame. Just ice in his veins and electricity sparking in his pupils. He heard his phone ring from a thousand miles away but didn’t have the means to answer it.

After ten hours of driving, Mac began having second thoughts. All three gang members still in Philly had tried calling him, probably about their stolen cars or the empty register, and he couldn’t shake the implications of what would happen if he was wrong about this, if he drove two days straight just to find that Dennis had renewed his prescription weeks ago, that he was finally living the life he’d always wanted and Mac had done one more stupid, reckless thing for a man who simply didn’t feel like talking to him.

Dennis would have texted back, though. Angry or not, bitter or calm, his need to have the last word would have pushed him to that. And Mac knew better than to ignore the twisting knots in his stomach completely.

Dennis’ heart was a hummingbird fluttering in his ribcage when he finally sank into sleep, head perched somewhere on Brady’s torso. In a brief moment of lucidity he had seen his phone’s screen, but the name that flashed on it and the nervous spasm of hope that accompanied it were already forgotten.


	9. What Kind of Man

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mac McDonald come get your mans

Mac knocked on four wrong doors before Mandy finally opened one of them, looking harried. He couldn’t exactly say it was a relief to find her, but she welcomed him in cordially enough. “You’re Dennis’…person, right?” she called over her shoulder as she led him inside. 

“Something like that, I guess.” He stepped gingerly around a pile of legos scattered over the carpet. “I’m actually here because I’m worried about him.”

She halted for a brief second, scanning him with a glance. “You haven’t heard from him lately?”

He forced himself not to roll his eyes. None of this was her fault.

“I haven’t heard from him since he left. Two days ago was the first time I even tried to contact him, I found his meds at my apartment and I didn’t know if he’d gotten more.”

Mandy’s face scrunched into confusion. “His meds?”

Great. “We should probably sit down for this one,” he muttered.

Dennis hadn’t said a word to her about his BPD. Of course he hadn’t. She’d met him after he’d started treatment, right when he started to stabilize, and it would’ve taken at least a few weeks for the meds to get completely out of his system. If he was trying to rebuild himself as an ideal father—and he’d made it clear that was his goal—mental illness had no place in the picture. He was never great at being realistic about himself. 

“So now that he’s off them,” she finally murmured once Mac had finished, “What’s gonna happen to him?”

Mac shrugged, eyes glued to the floor. “If his symptoms come back, it’ll be a lot of mood swings. Probably some narcissism, but that’s kind of just him. And impulsiveness is the big one.” He locked his fingers together, so tightly his knuckles whitened. “He’s had some issues with drugs and self harm in the past.”

Her eyes widened. “What do you mean?”

Mac’s head dropped onto his palms. “Look, it’s a long history and I’m sorry he hasn’t been honest with you, but the details of the thing aren’t that important right now.” She just nodded, mutely. “What was the last time you saw him or heard from him?”

Her hands were knitted together now, twisting over themselves. “It’s been two days,” she said quietly, as if she were ashamed to say it out loud (well, maybe she should be, Mac thought bitterly). “We don’t really see each other so I thought maybe I’d just been missing him, but I guess I haven’t gotten any calls either.”

A horrible, ridiculous surge of glee sparked in Mac’s stomach at that—they didn’t see each other. They weren’t close. Mandy didn’t have him, would never have him. None of that would be any good if they didn’t find him, though.

Dennis was in the middle of rising from the dead at the moment. He’d woken up like he always did the morning after a dalliance with crack: nauseous, shivering, and with every muscle heavy and aching as if he’d been dragged over jagged rocks. Brady was better at this than he was, ready with water, with a blanket, with more rock. It took more lately to get him to the untethered, painless state he aimed for than it used to, but that wasn’t surprising, just less than ideal. In his haze, he lost track of Brady. A mouth was on the skin of his throat, but it could have belonged to anyone, any set of teeth could be nipping under his earlobe, any hand could be the one skimming over his ribs. Dennis’ eyes fluttered shut and let his brain coagulate the sensations into an image of Mac. No point pretending he didn’t miss him right now. Distantly, his phone pinged. Hadn’t it always buzzed before?

If Dennis was in the same place as his phone—and Mac had to believe he was—he wasn’t far away. The circle on the screen of a “Find my Phone” website showed a street less than fifteen miles from Mandy’s house. “Alright,” Mac muttered, more to himself than Mandy, “That rules out him leaving the state, at least.”

“Didn’t he have a password on that phone?” Mandy asked, hovering over Mac’s shoulder.

As if that had ever mattered. As if they’d ever kept secrets like that from each other. “He uses the same one for everything. Do you know where this place is?”

She leaned forward and one of Brian’s tiny hands swung into Mac’s hair while he dozed on her hip. He let it stay there, the kid wasn’t yanking, and after three months, his resemblance to Dennis was starting to really show in his nose. “I know the neighborhood, but I don’t go through there if I can help it cause of the—“ her jaw dropped slightly. “Oh.”

“Junkies, right?”

“Right.” She said it quietly, like she was afraid of offending him, like he hadn’t spent forty-odd years trying to please junkies.

“I’ll drive,” he said simply.

Sex on crack wasn’t something that ever quite lost its edge, and thank god for that. Every voice that had ever whispered to Dennis that he was a god was with him now, cheering, setting his blood off at a racing clip. He hung limply off the couch after, collapsed next to Brady and panting but not quite cuddling. They didn't know anything about each other past their names and phone numbers, it was no time to start fucking cuddling.   
He was nearly asleep again when the pounding on the door started, frantic and hard enough to rattle the dry wall. His first thought was cops, but that didn’t make sense unless someone had ratted to them about Brady’s dealing, and he couldn’t move either way, not right now.  
Brady clambered over him, pulling on pants and shouting at whoever it was to “Pipe the fuck down”, and Dennis couldn’t see who was at the door, but he didn’t have to.

He’d know that voice anywhere.

“-relax, I’m here for my friend, I just need to know if he’s here.”

It couldn’t happen like this, the first time Mac saw him in months could not be while he was naked and disheveled in a goddamn drug den, but he still couldn’t get his limbs to cooperate like he needed them to.

“His name’s Dennis. Reynolds. I’m just here to take him home, okay?”

Home, home, like he even had one of those anymore, like he hadn’t obliterated any chance of calling someplace home with his own stupid hunger. Yeah, Mac, take me home, let me simmer with my bastard kid and a woman who hates me until I just explode again and take them with me, take me back to Philly so I can face the music and see the I-told-you-so etched into Frank’s face. He buried himself under the blanket, struggling to wriggle into underwear, trying to ignore what was turning into a scuffle just twenty feet away. The footsteps coming down the stairs, those had to be Mac’s, they were hopelessly flat-footed, dammit. Hadn’t Charlie taught him to hide on furniture like this? Like a starfish. The flatter you go, the less you get noticed.

He remembered a second too late, as the blanket was ripped off, that Charlie was a fucking idiot.

Mac wasn’t angry, or if he was it wasn’t showing on his face yet. No, he just looked relieved and painfully, awfully real. 

He must have driven, or he was trying for another beard—the stubble on his face was past the mark of his usual scruff. He drove. He drove—it must have been at least two days—to come back for Dennis.

Dennis felt like he might vomit.

Getting dressed and steered to the car was a blur, and hors later, Dennis realized that must have been because he was falling asleep even as they left. His face squelched quietly as he unstuck it from the vinyl of the seat in Dee’s car, blinking rapidly to acclimate to the sunlight. Mac was humming along with a Third Eye Blind song, the one about meth, funny enough, and lazily steering over the highway. He looked good with his arms loose like this and his scruff grown out on his face. He also looked tired, more than Dennis had noticed back at Brady’s.

“Where’re we going?” he finally croaked. 

Mac started, he must have been letting his thoughts wander. “Back to Philly. I said I was taking you home, remember?” He bit his lip, the way he always did when he had to give Dennis bad news. “Did you, um—“ he turned his eyes back to the road. “You didn’t want to say goodbye to Brian and Mandy, did you?”

Dennis’ lips were dry enough to crack, his tongue heavy and useless. “You got any water?”

He watched Mac blink rapidly. “Yeah, behind you, but—“

“Mac,” he said quietly, “Would you let me go back if I wanted to?” 

They didn’t speak again after that until Mac pulled into a gas station.


	10. The Old Apartment

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> i'm back and so are Mac and Dennis

They weren’t close enough to Philly for it to be a Wawa, but Mac bought him a hoagie anyway and Dennis forced himself to choke his down. The heavy, greasy smell of Mac’s chimichanga was more upsetting to him anyhow. The last twenty-four hours had been painful, all cold sweats and feverish chills, and today wasn’t looking much better based on the nausea he was feeling. When he came back to the stall they were sharing from tossing his wrapper out, Mac had slid a cup of ice water across the table. “You looked a little queasy,” he said with a gesture towards it.

“The smell in here isn’t helping,” Dennis shrugged. 

Mac nodded and sucked the last of the grease off his thumb, and Dennis wanted to gag, but he’d forgotten how Mac looked with his cheeks hollowed like that, with his lips pursed and his eyelashes fluttering. His fingers tightened around the cup. “I have aspirin in the car if you need it,” he heard Mac say as if from a distance.

“Yeah, I remember.” The water was helping, at least. “Didn’t I put em there?” It was the first time, he realized, that either of them had mentioned a time before he left since Mac had shown up.

“Yeah, probably,” Mac said. “You used to be the one who thought ahead like that.” Dennis didn’t ask if the past tense meant he’d lost that role. Now that the fog that had packed itself densely around his brain was beginning to clear, he took another good look at Mac. There was more gray peppering his beard than he remembered and he’d bulked up for real, the kind of actual muscle mass that got turned heads in a gym. “You okay?”

He’d been staring. “Yeah, fine.”

He had questions cascading haphazardly down to his mouth before he could sort them out now; the effort of focusing on them was making him sullen again. “Just so you know,” he said, finally settling on the one that wasn’t really a question, “If you dump me off at a rehab once we get to Philly I’ll fly right back to the sticks.”

For a moment, Dennis thought Mac might punch him then and there. Instead, he fixed a glowering stare on him and said, in a voice that came out deadly quiet, “If you think that’s the plan, you can get a car back there right now.” He crumpled the thin paper of his napkin into a ball. “Just so you know.”

Three months ago, that would have been the end of it because Dennis hates trying to chase down approval and he would have felt certain Mac would get over it anyway like he always did. A lot had changed three months, he supposed. “I don’t think I’m being unreasonable considering you kidnapped me—“

“I kidnapped you?”

“You put me in that car against my will, that’s the definition—“

“Because you were just so happy where you were—“

“Don’t you dare,” he cut in, finally finding enough strength in his voice to shut Mac up, “I never asked for you to make my fucking happiness your problem, I certainly never asked you to stick your goddamn nose in while I was trying to just have a normal life.” They were attracting stares from the other customers and he shouldn’t have cared about that, but he could feel them pricking at the back of his neck like needles. “What was the plan here, anyway? Where the hell am I supposed to stay, exactly?” 

Mac’s eyebrows furrowed together. “It’s not like I rented out your room or anything.” 

Oh. Oh, Jesus Christ. He wasn’t even irritated by that—he couldn’t be, that’s exactly what he was hoping for, deep down—but to have it laid out like that, threadbare, like it should be obvious to anyone, was a shock to say the least. “You—you expect me to believe you want me to move back in with you?” He had to say it that way, as an accusation, or it never would have left his mouth. 

Mac just shook his head. “I don’t really care if you believe me or not. It’s that or Dee’s, and she might be pissed since I stole her car to get you.”  
He didn’t say any of this with affection, or like he was secretly, silently begging Dennis not to take the other option. Dennis would know, he’d watched Mac do that for nearly twenty-five years, but there was also a small change at the corner of his mouth when Dennis nodded and followed him back to the car.

They were somewhere around Chicago, he realized gradually. “Did you ever visit Chicago?” he asked, if for no other reason than to break down the silence. He knew the answer.

Mac replied anyway. “Nah, couldn’t travel much as a kid. You were the one who went on spring break.”

“Oh yeah,” he passed a hand over his face. “Why didn’t you come with?”

Mac let out a kind of resigned sound. “I was mad at you. You were hanging out with that one girl a ton so I just stayed with Charlie.”

That much was news to him. “Who, Amanda?” He couldn’t even remember her hair color, the name was a stretch.

“I think so, yeah. I didn’t want to spend a week being a third wheel.”

“You wouldn’t have been,” Dennis said without thinking. Mac just smirked.

“Yeah, maybe not. Didn’t know that at the time, though.” He hadn’t looked over at Dennis since they got back in the car, and Dennis felt grateful for that at the moment. The unspoken portion of this whole endeavor—what would happen to them, as a pair, when they returned to Philly—was almost tangible, like Dennis could see the question displayed on the dash. Mac had come back for him, that had to mean something positive, but it wasn’t like they could just pick up where they left off, was it? 

Dennis didn’t notice when he fell asleep again, but he woke up hours later to Mac gently shaking his shoulder in front of a building he’d never expected to see again. It had to be around two a.m. based on how stiff his neck was, but even through his grogginess he remembered where the door was and how many stairs it was to Mac’s—their?—apartment. 

Stretching out on a bed, a real bed, felt even better than he expected it to; he almost didn’t register Mac’s hands pulling the blanket up to his shoulders before he drifted back to sleep. 

He awoke the next day when a plastic, orange bottle bounced off of his forehead and he heard Mac’s snickering before he was fully awake. “What the hell,” he grumbled, blinking away sleep to read the label on the bottle. 

“I let you sleep as long as I could,” Mac said from the doorway, “But you’re supposed to take those the same time every day, and if I remember right you usually took ‘em around noon.”

He was right, and he still had that knack for remembering every detail about Dennis that was inconvenient for him. Mac had also just said they’d slept until noon, or at least Dennis had, which didn’t feel like the best way to start off back in Philly. Dennis groaned and shifted up to his elbows, letting the covers fall to his stomach and noting, with a bite of annoyance, that he felt better-rested than he had in weeks. “Who says I want to take them?” he asked, feeling more than a little petulant.

Without flinching, Mac replied “I do,” and left the room again. The smell of coffee floated into the space he left; Dennis could hear him rummaging for mugs. 

He gagged on his first try swallowing the tablets, they weren’t small, but they went down after a few gulps of water. In the interest of not going to rehab, he also ate a piece of the toast Mac had set on the kitchen table when he sat down, Mac watching him as he did. “That’s creepy, you know,” he pointed out.

“You used to watch me sleep,” Mac countered. Dennis ignored that, but it brought a new topic into question.

“Where did you sleep last night?” 

“Couch,” Mac said nonchalantly. 

“So you never got a second bed.”

Mac’s eyebrows crunched together. “Why would I? Didn’t expect you to come back.” Right.

Dennis sipped at his coffee for a moment, stalling. “Are you going to?” 

This was obviously the one question Mac had been hoping he wouldn’t ask, given how red his ears flushed in a matter of seconds. He gulped down what was left in his coffee mug instead of answering and stood up, failing to look as calm as he was clearly trying to as he stuffed his wallet into his pocket and slipped on shoes. “I gotta get to the bar,” he said at last, “I’ll think about it while I’m there, but I really need to get Dee’s car back right now, you know? I’ll be back soon, but there’s, you know, there’s food and shit in the fridge.”

He was out the door before Dennis could protest and Dennis realized, with a maddening kind of smug feeling, that this must be how Mac had felt a dozen or so times over the last two decades: confused, shut-out, and utterly frustrated. If it were anyone except him, he guessed, they might see that as a chance to do better by Mac in the future. But since Mac hadn’t chosen someone else twenty-five years ago, what he was going to get from Dennis was revenge.

Mac, meanwhile, was slumped over the counter at Paddy’s, trying to ignore the three angry voices around him enough to just think. Aside from stealing Dee’s car and their cash from the week before, the gang didn’t appreciate him bringing Dennis back without so much as a heads up. Currently, there was talk of an arbitration of some kind—he’d lost the details—that was interrupted when Charlie piped up, “But wait, wait, you’re not gonna let him stay at your place, are you?”

Mac lifted his head back up. “So what if I do?”

This was met with a chorus of groans. “No offense, dude,” Charlie began, “but he kind of-“

“Wrecked your shit,” Dee finished for him. “And not that I care, but not even you aren’t stupid enough to just let him walk back in and act like he didn’t do anything wrong.”

“When did I say that’s what I was doing?”

“You stole a car for him-“

“Stealing your car doesn’t really count!” 

At that, Dee simply let out a frustrated grunt and turned to Charlie. “You do it, I can’t deal with him.”

Charlie didn’t speak for a few seconds and shook his head as if trying to clear water from his ears. “Why did you even go get him?” he finally asked.

“I told you, he was off his meds and I-“

“So what?” Charlie cut him off. “What does it matter to you if that asshole is taking his crazy pills or not?” Mac gaped at him, his mouth hanging open like a fish. “Look, we all know you guys had a thing before he left, and that’s fine, but we just got you over him leaving, Mac. I don’t think we’ll be able to patch you up if this happens again, and we can’t lose another gang member.”

Aside from Dennis (maybe) Mac couldn’t think of anyone on earth he was closer to than Charlie. Right now, he also couldn’t think of anyone (aside from Dennis) that he was angrier with. “You patched me up?” he said incredulously. “You jumped ship and sided with Frank the first chance you got, don’t give me that shit.”

“Don’t avoid the question,” Frank chimed in.

“Oh fuck off, Frank,” Mac barked, wheeling on him. “None of this would’ve happened if you hadn’t been such a shit parent-“

“We’ve heard this before,” Frank plowed on. “I never said I was a good dad, don’t put that on me. You’re the one bringin’ that disaster back to Philly; we deserve to know why.”

There was a stony silence in the bar for a long stretch of seconds while Mac swallowed past the lump in his throat. “He’s my friend,” he said at last. “He’s our friend and I know he’s a piece of shit. I know that better than anyone. But he needed help, so I helped him.” They gave him the look only people who’ve known you more than half your life can give you when they see through your bullshit, but left it at that. “Sorry I took your car,” he grumbled at Dee as he left.

The bus ride home was too hot, too cramped, and overall, sweaty. The sun coming through the grime on the window and into Mac’s eyes was giving him a headache and the two strangers standing near him smelled like horrible, literal ass, but he couldn’t help but think he’d rather stay on this route than go back to the apartment.

Not that he didn’t want to see Dennis. Of course he did, or he wouldn’t have bothered tracking him down, but every single thing he’d taken for granted about their relationship before the Mandy incident was under question now. He’d never liked not knowing where he stood with people and, mercurial as his moods could be, Dennis had never put him through this much doubt, and that was without even broaching the issue of his question about the bed situation that morning.

His whole deliberation process stopped cold when he opened the door and was greeted by Dennis, sprawled on their couch, fully naked, panting, with one hand wrapped around his cock and the other somewhere between his legs. “Jesus Christ,” Dennis groaned, “You took forever.”


End file.
